Some brothers are so attached to their spiritual elders - from a century, two centuries, even three centuries ago - that they adopt their specific guidances and advices universally and unrestrictedly, without even looking into their own backdrop and context. A guy was saying how evil English is, and how grotesque sending children to university is! And hes sitting here in the UK! And whats his *Dalil*? Something he picked up from when the Indian scholars were in a battle of preserving the Muslims identity and faith under British rule a century ago. Many Ahkam of the Shariah are connected to Masalih and Mafasid (benefits and harms), in which one ruling cannot be applied universally. Imagine where that puts the advices of the elders then. Unless we want to take our elders as our gods, then thats another matter. I would argue that, just like self-study of Tafsir and Hadith is dangerous without proper guidance from trained scholars, then likewise studying the autobiographies and anecdotes from the lives of yesteryears elders from faraway lands in different political and religious situations - without regulation and supervision - is as dangerous. Dont ever think, just because they were your elders, that their works are safe for you to read by yourself. They are not. Instead, they might drag you down into a siege mentality against (imaginary) colonialists, as if you were in pre-20th-century times. The solution is to study them under the trained scholar. If you cant find a trained scholar, then suffice by sticking to the basics of the religion, and rely contemporary Du`at in your locality. If anything, universal guidance can be found in the Sirah and the Sahabah. They are our cake, the icing on top and the cherry on the icing. Elders stories should be treated as merely the glazing on the cherries insofar as their significance goes.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:30:46 +0000
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